What does AI Humphrey actually do for the Civil Service? - an AI view

 AI Humphrey is a suite of AI-powered tools designed to improve efficiency and effectiveness within the UK Civil Service. 

It includes tools like "Consult" for analysing public consultation responses, "Parlex" for parliamentary debate analysis, "Minute" for secure transcription and summarization, "Lex" for legal research, and "Redbox" for generative AI tasks like policy summarization.

 These tools aim to streamline processes, automate tasks, and accelerate research, ultimately helping civil servants work more efficiently and deliver better public services. 

"Oh Yeah" a human view

Description of a SPAD?

The late television presenter and everyman philosopher, Bryan Magee, was particularly critical about universities that he felt, often through courses in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE), were churning out unthinking drones and philistine technocrats, people he characterised as having a ‘clever shallowness’. Such people are ‘self-congratulatory, complacent’, combining ‘intelligent self-assurance with blinkeredness’, he wrote.

It’s usually the case that those who know history understand why a united Europe is a foolish and dangerous idea. The clever, self-assured and shallow are incapable of understanding why.

Author Patrick West is a spiked columnist. His latest book "Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times" is published by Societas

Home Office Take Note!

 

Report reveals opportunities for new era of patron-centered library services Lean Library today released "Librarian Futures," a white paper based on a large-scale survey of 4,000 librarians and patrons that examines librarian-patron workflows and relationships. The report finds that while patrons are unaware of the full extent of librarian support (with 77% beginning research discovery outside of the library), more than 80% greatly appreciate librarians and would want the library more deeply embedded in their natural workflows.

Gov slams critical database report as opaque, flawed, inaccurate - The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/11/rowntree_report/

By OUT-LAW.COM Not the diplomatic dept then

Posted in Government, 11th December 2009 10:13 GMT

The Government has slammed as opaque, inadequate and riddled with factual errors a think tank report that claimed that a quarter of Government databases were operating illegally. The Government has said the report was methodologically flawed.

In March independent political reform body the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust published 'Database State', a report which said that 11 of the UK's 46 databases were almost certainly operating in breach of data protection and other laws.

Panic! Panic! Panic? Remember K2 - moneymaking scams!

Maurizio Morabito Same fears, different name? Maurizio Morabito uncovers a 1974 CIA report [link below]showing that the ‘scientific consensus’ then was that the world was cooling. http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf

Same old story! Public servants in Australia to social network - if access allows!

BLOG, tweet, update Facebook - that's the message the Australian Government is sending its bureaucrats as part of a push to break down barriers between public servants and ordinary people....................................................

"Yet not enough public servants have work access to these building blocks of Government 2.0.''

Indeed, none of the public servants on the taskforce preparing the Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0 report had access to instant messaging despite the fact that it was an important tool for other taskforce members, it said.

The report also noted that one public servant responded to a call for colleagues to engage in robust work discussion online with: "Ha - we can't get to FaceBook, YouTube, Flickr, or most common discussion forums where I work.'

(Can't resist saying - some of us, in a UK government department, started doing this back in 2004 - now the victim of a cutback in public service costs!

However, probably left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, see also

Update on digital engagement in Home Office )

Large-scale public sector IT projects - CIPFA

Think-tank recommends appointment of IT minister
Central government should be given more powers to intervene in large-scale public sector IT projects to avoid costly failures, according to a think-tank...

Lost laptop - track, and detonate data!

Download of the day: FireFound tracks your stolen computer, nukes your personal data - PhysOrg.com
The worst thing about losing your laptop isn't the cost of replacing your gear; it's the loss of personal info and saved passwords. Firefox extension FireFound tracks your lost laptop's location and nukes your personal data in a few clicks.